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PCI Firewire card, half working?


voggorb
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Hi,

 

I just bought a sweex firewire pci card for my hackintosh and i can't really get it to work.. Connecting my Focusrite Saffire LE soundcard to it (which worked on my previous hackintosh with firewire onboard), and i can't play movies/songs. everything lags, and often completely stalls. soundcard is properly installed and showing up in system preferences so I think it has something to do with the firewire card..

 

When a few seconds of a song or video actually manages to play, the sound comes out in my speakers, but it's like the firewire connection is REALLY SLOW or something, i don't know :D

 

any ideas?

 

thx

 

system:

 

Gigabyte DS3R

Q6600

4GB corsair 6400

Sweex PCI firewire card

Focusrite Saffire LE sound card

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I've got similar problem. Some avi's are not working ok and sound gets distorted up to no sound and then comes back for couple of seconds and then again down.

 

Hi,

 

I just bought a sweex firewire pci card for my hackintosh and i can't really get it to work.. Connecting my Focusrite Saffire LE soundcard to it (which worked on my previous hackintosh with firewire onboard), and i can't play movies/songs. everything lags, and often completely stalls. soundcard is properly installed and showing up in system preferences so I think it has something to do with the firewire card..

 

When a few seconds of a song or video actually manages to play, the sound comes out in my speakers, but it's like the firewire connection is REALLY SLOW or something, i don't know :thumbsup_anim:

 

any ideas?

 

thx

 

system:

 

Gigabyte DS3R

Q6600

4GB corsair 6400

Sweex PCI firewire card

Focusrite Saffire LE sound card

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Ti Chipsets are the only ones that work reliably in my experience.. others work, but never perfectly. this may be your issue, or not... just a thought.

 

Mine is:

FireWire (OHCI) TI ID 803a PCI now active, GUID 00c09f00009c3513; max speed s400.

 

but I've got problems still. Not with every .avi, sometimes latency problems but it might be because of hdd connected through Saffire. Or RAM too low...

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Some ppl say that using pre-10.4.9 kext solves their problem. I'll try what I've got today and let you know if that worked for me.

 

hmm so im not the only one.. and i've seen a couple posts about slow firewire on hackintoshes.. doesn't anyone have a solution to this? :wacko:
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I just picked up a saffire and everything looks good, but I can't get any sound out. Checking on Focusrite's site, it says the correct AppleFWaudio kext for 10.5.2 is 2.4.0 but mine is 2.4.1 (which isn't even mentioned on their website). Can anyone confirm what version of AppleFWaudio they are running compared to Focusrite's info and wether their saffire works or not? Also where can I get the 2.4.0 kext to test this? Here's the info:

 

http://www.focusrite.com/answerbase/article.php?id=237

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AppleFWAudio 2.4.2

Saffire works with glitches.

 

I just picked up a saffire and everything looks good, but I can't get any sound out. Checking on Focusrite's site, it says the correct AppleFWaudio kext for 10.5.2 is 2.4.0 but mine is 2.4.1 (which isn't even mentioned on their website). Can anyone confirm what version of AppleFWaudio they are running compared to Focusrite's info and wether their saffire works or not? Also where can I get the 2.4.0 kext to test this? Here's the info:

 

http://www.focusrite.com/answerbase/article.php?id=237

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well, I've moved to 10.5.4 (which is AppleFWAudio 2.4.2) and still not a peep out of the saffire. Very wierd considering everything checks out software wise. Maybe it's this onboard firewire (Via)....

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also on 10.5.4 with AppleFWAudio 2.4.2, no sound from the saffire. well, sometimes 2 seconds of sound, then it stalls. god there just has to be a solution to this! one of the main reasons i have os x on my pc is because i record and work in Logic...WITH my Saffire!! XD

 

the saffire worked without problems on my previous mobo, a Abit IS7 with onboard firewire...

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Lol, I'm doing the same thing Voggorb. I have logic 5 for Pc and I was going to do the Logic 8 upgrade if I could get this working. I just did a test with another drive and winXP in the same computer and the saffire didn't work there either. Then I put in the latest windows driver(2.4) and firmware and now it works! The only other thing i did was turn off all windows sounds because I think the 22khz sounds were canning the Saffire (so as soon as windows would start, it would kill the saffire with the welcome tune - this is just a theory). I'm at work right now so I can't test, but do you know if OSX sounds are 22k as well? It might be worth a try to not have any OSX sounds playing though the saffire and only assign it in Logic...

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  • 2 weeks later...

LOL, the saga continues. I used the tiger AppleFWaudio.kext from the link in this thread and now the crackles are gone for good.

 

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=100343

 

Interestingly, my onboard firewire now also works with this kext!

 

Unfortunately now the saffire control says "lost firewire connection" even though it's working fine. more research...

 

EDIT: Installing original drivers and firmware makes saffire control work, but I'm not thrilled with this solution. Since I also use it on WinXP I'll be switching the firmware constantly unless I revert those drivers too. Using it on Leopard is going to have to wait I think...

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OK, I'm not sure why but it's working now. Here's what I did:

 

As a last ditch effort I went to this link at Focusrite and downlaoded the 2.1.0 AppleFWaudio installer package. After reboot the no sound issue I started with returned, but the Saffire control no longer gave me a connection error. So I ditched the 2.1.0 kext, replaced it with the 2.2.0 kext from my post above (did the chown, chmod thing), rebooted and presto - everything works with latest Saffire firmware and drivers on the built in via-based firewire port of my motherboard. The only thing I can think of is that the installer changed some other relavent file, but I really don't know. Time to make music.

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  • 1 month later...

I confirm that the AppleFWAudio kext used by kuru to solve the problem with the Saffire LE works fine, but the version of that kext is 1.2.2, and not 2.2.0.

 

I repeat the link:

http://rapidshare.com/files/108894413/Appl...o.kext.zip.html

 

For those who are as beginner as I am, here are the lines to enter in the terminal to allow the kext modification:

 

sudo chown -R root:wheel /System/Library/Extensions/AppleFWAudio.kext

sudo find /System/Library/Extensions/AppleFWAudio.kext -type d -exec chmod 0755 {} \;

sudo find /System/Library/Extensions/AppleFWAudio.kext -type f -exec chmod 0644 {} \;

 

(press enter after each line - type password after the first one)

 

Thanks to kuru.

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I confirm that the AppleFWAudio kext used by kuru to solve the problem with the Saffire LE works fine, but the version of that kext is 1.2.2, and not 2.2.0.

 

I repeat the link:

http://rapidshare.com/files/108894413/Appl...o.kext.zip.html

 

For those who are as beginner as I am, here are the lines to enter in the terminal to allow the kext modification:

 

sudo chown -R root:wheel /System/Library/Extensions/AppleFWAudio.kext

sudo find /System/Library/Extensions/AppleFWAudio.kext -type d -exec chmod 0755 {} \;

sudo find /System/Library/Extensions/AppleFWAudio.kext -type f -exec chmod 0644 {} \;

 

(press enter after each line - type password after the first one)

 

Thanks to kuru.

 

This does not work for me... Could you please upload the updater from Focusrite site? I seem not to be able to download it now.

 

Thanks in advance.

mentorek

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Mentorek,

 

Here is the focusrite page with the link to the 2.1.0 installer

 

http://www.focusrite.com/answerbase/en/article.php?id=237

 

My saffire was fixed by first running the 2.1.0 installer then replacing AppleFWAudio.kext with the 1.2.2 version from above. Thanks to °Ast for the version # correction. Hope this works for you, my saffire is still working flawlessly.

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